Kaufman Is A Stickler At Needling

The Director Of Quills, A New Film About The Marquis De Sade, Wants His Movies To Agitate Viewers.

December 25, 2000|By Roger Moore of The Sentinel Staff

Filmmaker Philip Kaufman isn't happy unless a movie has irked -- or at least challenged -- a lot of people. With the opening today of Quills, his new film about the Marquis de Sade, the director of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry & June thinks he's succeeded.

"We felt that it should be a movie that would not just disturb conservatives, but liberals alike," Kaufman, 64, said from San Francisco. "Everyone should be disturbed by this sort of extreme expression. There is no final answer as to whether or not extreme expression can be dangerous."

Is the Marquis, the man for whom the term sadism was coined, the creative impulse personified, or a monster whose depraved writings drove weaker minds into horrific sexual violence?

"We don't want to put the Marquis on a pedestal," Kaufman said. "We don't want to make him a folk hero. He was definitely not someone you'd want walking the streets, even though there are murderers walking the streets today, and the Marquis never killed anyone. He should be in an asylum. But should he be censored?"

Kaufman, a filmmaker with a renegade, push-the-envelope reputation, identifies with his protagonist. Not de Sade's kinkiness or violence. But the creative impulse that drove him.

"I identify with characters who are compelled to express themselves. If I weren't able to make films, something I go through for extended periods, I'd feel some of the same frustrations that this character does.

"But at the same time, I identify with the Joaquin Phoenix character, a liberal priest trying to hold his world, the asylum, together. This is like a tennis match, with Geoffrey Rush (as the Marquis), Michael Caine (as the censorious Dr. Royer-Collard) and Joaquin, all at the net, raising the stakes with every shot. And the Marquis is the evil genius, the John McEnroe, of this match."

Quills is about a subject near and dear to Kaufman -- the hypocrisy of censorship. It should come as no shock that the guy who gave the ratings board fits over Henry & June directed the R-rated Quills, a film whose violence and sexuality far surpass anything that the NC-17 rated Henry served up.

"I don't have that impish streak that says, `I'm going to go out and show them, this time,' " he said with a laugh. "But when you get into sexual matters, especially in America, you've hit a flash point." Kaufman didn't get into a brawl with the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board over Quills. He almost wishes he had. In the landmark 1990 fight over Henry & June, Kaufman argued for changes in the movie ratings system that would allow serious films with explicit sexual content a rating that reflected higher aims than mere porn. NC-17 was what the ratings board came up with.

"It wasn't a fight that I wanted, but they started it," he said with a chuckle. "Why is `adult' a curse word in our society? How did that happen? We're all concerned with sexuality. Why shouldn't movies deal with it in a way that is adult, not Playboy-adolescent?"

To that end, Kaufman makes movies that aren't aimed at adolescents, which helps explain why he works infrequently. He co-wrote the script to Rising Sun and contributed to TV's Young Indiana Jones. But that was the only completed work he's had since Henry & June. For a filmmaker with Writers and Directors Guild nominations for his work, an Oscar nomination for his script to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, that's a lot of down time. It's not by design.

"You've heard of `Development Hell?' I spend a lot of time there," he said. "A lot of the stuff I've wanted to make, we haven't been able to get big enough names in the cast to get it made. `Can you get Tom?' There's one or two Toms that they always want. And if you can't get Cruise or Hanks, they won't make the movie. I'll work for a year or two on a movie that ends up not getting made. . . .

"When I was going to do The Alienist, I spent two years on it. In the beginning, Hollywood was all fired up to do it. Then, somebody decided that a movie based on [Caleb Carr's] book about young boy prostitutes being killed in turn-of-the-century New York was going to get them into trouble with politicians. How can you show that in a movie without upsetting some politician?"

Kaufman, whose film has generated Oscar buzz and has already been honored by the National Board of Review as the year's best picture, promises to continue to seek out the unfashionable, the difficult. Even if it means he doesn't have work for much of the time.

"Listen, I view my films as provocative, not subversive," he said. "[But] maybe I do like to push peoples' buttons."